Typography Porn: 100 Years of Title Design in Film

By Alessandra Ram

From the highly stylized introductions of the James Bond franchise to Woody Allen’s minimalist black-and-white template, opening credits in movies have a curious history.

This sleek short from digital media institute Berliner Technische Kunsthochschule (BTK) recounts the fascinating evolution of title design in film. Opening credits have always served a kind of gatekeeping function for the film industry, and continue to set the tone for the films themselves (i.e. Alfred Hitchcock movies). With the invention of television, however, families preferred to stay home rather than go to the cinema, resulting in fancier opening sequences as filmmakers struggled to capture viewers’ attention from the start.